#180 Why Patients are Confused About TMD

After doing over 5000 consultations with patients with TMD symptoms one thing is for sure.  Patients are confused about TMD.  Whether patients have had symptoms for 6 weeks or 6 decades, one thing is certain, patients have no idea what is wrong with them, all they can do is describe the symptoms and hope the doctor can figure it out.   

Here is an actual written list of symptoms recently presented to me by a patient.  She stated each of these symptoms “comes and goes” without any particular schedule or any known reason. 

• Toothaches, left side (molars) 

• Jaw pain, left side (dull and sometimes sharp) 

• Talking, eating, and laughing is uncomfortable and sometimes with pain 

• Swollen cheek on left side 

• Headaches/migraines 

• Shoulder pain 

• Feels like a bruise on the lower jawbone, left side 

• Earaches, left side (getting more consistent) 

• Ringing in the ears, left side (at night when laying down) 

• Pain at night, if laying on the left side 

• Stiffness in the jaw 

• Can’t yawn fully 

• Can’t open fully 

• Can’t bite down on hard things (even toast or a soft sandwich) 

• I have to eat soft food 

• Moving jaw to the left or right can be uncomfortable and scary 

• Hammering in right ear that wakes me up 

• Feels like the cartilage “comes out of place” and I have to “work it back in” to open 

• Cold, damp grey weather makes it feel worse 

• Sunshine and hot weather makes it feel better 

Her medical doctor told her that she might have “TMJ”, and that she needs to talk to a dentist. Of course, everyone has two TMJ’s. (Temporomandibular Joints) but for 50 years everyone has been referring to the disease as TMJ.  Do you go to an orthopedic surgeon with knee pain and tell him you have “knees”? 

Here is exactly what this patient stated about seeing a dentist. “I asked the local dentists about this. I described my symptoms and he said it might be “TMJ”. Then he said: TMJ is so complicated, he didn’t treat people with it because he hadn’t been trained on it, and there’s basically nothing dentists can do for it –except he recommended me to ice it.” 

Patients are confused about TMD because the doctors are confused about TMD.  This dentist was correct in stating that dentists are taught nothing about this disease in dental school.  The only thing they are taught is that the TMJ is a complicated joint and TMD is a complicated disease. 

Neither of these are true.  TMD is a very simple disease to understand and treat once you know that the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) operates like any other joint in the body and responds to damage exactly like any other joint in the body. 

Damage to a joint cause’s inflammation.  Inflammation is the body’s attempt to heal.  If the damage is so severe or the cause of the damage is not mitigated, the inflammation reverts to chronic inflammation which will further damage the joint without healing resolution and creates all the symptoms.  Each and every symptom listed by this patient is created by chronic inflammation of the TMJ.   Chronic inflammation can be reversed and resolved by unloading and resting the damaged joint like crutches rests the knee and a sling rests the elbow.   

Resting the TMJ with a device that separates the posterior teeth according to a tested protocol is the best way to reverse chronic inflammation and treat TMD simply, efficiently, and predictably.  This is exactly how the patented, FDA Cleared, independent university study validated, Urbanek Device and Protocol work. 

Patients are confused about TMD because the doctors are confused and told the problem is complicated.  It’s not complicated. It’s quite simple.  The solution is better education for the doctors.  The mission of TMJ Services is to treat patients with TMD simply and successfully while educating doctors throughout the world to apply the same principles and achieve the same results.